Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The violent squall howling across the bottomless mountain chasm seemed to freeze in mid-air, suffocated by the incandescent brilliance of the golden dragon light.

The golden sphere hummed with dense, ancient runes, casting long, wavering shadows across the fractured ground.

Inside the shimmering protective barrier, Xun Xie’er was breathing heavily, her chest heaving in rapid, ragged gasps as she clutched her bruised neck with trembling fingers.

Her crystalline silver eyes were wide—stretched to their limits in pure, unadulterated terror and dizzying shock.

The cold, piercing sensation of that sword intent hovering barely a millimeter from her heart still lingered in her soul like the icy touch of death itself.

If not for the dormant life-saving seal her husband had secretly carved into her heart’s blood many years ago, her soul would have already been extinguished, severed, and scattered into the void.

Standing several paces away, supported lightly by Qing’er’s steady arm, Shen Haoran simply smiled.

His dark robes fluttered gently against the high-altitude winds, his golden eyes glowing with pure amusement as he watched the grand heroine of the realm tremble inside her golden cage.

RUMBLE—!

The sudden, catastrophic detonation of the golden dragon seal had momentarily disrupted the undulating pools of shadow that held the others captive.

Taking advantage of the brief shockwave, the elders of the White Dragon Sect, the elite imperial guards, and Chen Feng’s parents all scrambled to their feet, gasping for breath as they broke free from the floor.

”XIE’ER!”

Lin Ruo cried out in terror, her hands shaking as she reached toward her daughter-in-law, only to be held back by Chen Shan.

The old patriarch’s face was twisted in ferocious, protective fury, his eyes burning as he and the gathered elders all stood up and glared at Haoran with visceral, murderous hatred.

But, as the elders took in the radiant, majestic dragon light swirling protectively around Xun Xie’er, their bloodshot eyes widened, and they stared at the golden dragon surrounding Xun Xie’er in fanatical reverence.

After awhile, they all glared back at Haoran.

”Vile, treacherous demon!” a senior elder roared, his beard bristling with fury. ”To dare raise your hand against Lady Xun in the domain of the White Dragon Emperor, your soul will be torn into ten thousand fragments and fed to the abyss!”

Seeing the unmistakable manifestation of their supreme overlord’s power, a wave of manic, blind confidence surged through the veins of every single elder and guard present.

”The Emperor’s divine light has descended!”

”Slay this beast!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The atmosphere above violently ruptured as they detonated with blinding elemental qi!

Then, they summoned their spirit avatars, and towering, colossal manifestations of spiritual power erupted behind the elders’ backs, tearing through the cloud cover and blocking out the sky.

The crushing, combined pressure of several dozens of Spirit Avatars bore down upon the platform with apocalyptic weight, intending to pulverize the black-robed youth and his servant into dust.

However, standing silently half a step behind Haoran, Qing’er didn’t flinch, her cold, emotionless crimson eyes narrowed into two razor-thin slits of absolute, chilling contempt.

”Insects,” she whispered.

Without another word, the pitch-black shadow beneath her boots suddenly expanded, devouring the entire surroundings in an endless ocean of true abyss.

From the center of that writhing darkness, the laws of the mortal plane were violently rewritten as a shadowy, grotesque creature emerged from her shadows.

It was a nightmare given physical form, a titanic, multi-limbed abomination forged from concentrated, devouring flesh, covered in thousands of jagged rows of fangs that dripped with black bile.

The sheer, unfathomable aura radiating from the shadow beast made the earth itself groan and crack, radiating a power that completely eclipsed the rudimentary laws of the lower realm.

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR—!!!!!

The grotesque shadow beast roared with the sound of a dying universe, lunging forward with blinding, impossible speed.

Its colossal, clawed shadow appendages swept across the sky in a single, fluid horizontal arc.

CRUNCH!

SNAP!

SHATTER!

Like fragile, paper lanterns caught in the blast of a hurricane, the majestic Spirit Avatars were effortlessly crushed like brittle glass under the shadow beast’s claws.

Then, they all violently spat out fountains of black blood as the catastrophic soul-backlash tore through their meridians, their faces turning the color of dead ash.

Yet, Qing’er didn’t stop.

Her crimson eyes remained completely barren of mercy, devoid of the slightest flicker of human emotion.

With a cold, subtle clenching of her slender fist, she violently increased the power of her shadows.

The grotesque void creature did not merely swat them away, it descended upon the pinned elders, the guards, and Chen Feng’s screaming parents like a devouring cosmic grinder.

The spatial pressure multiplied ten thousand fold, compressing the atmospheric volume around their physical bodies until the air itself turned into liquid iron.

”NO! SPARE US—!”

”FENG’ER! SAVE—!”

SPLAT!

BANG!

CRACK-SPLAT!

They didn’t even have the chance to finish their dying screams.

Under the crushing weight of the void gravity, their physical bodies, defensive armor, bloodline bones, and internal organs were violently compressed beyond their structural limits, until they all exploded into blood and flesh.

BOOM!

A horrific, torrential downpour of dark crimson gore, shattered white bone fragments, and pulverized viscera splattered violently across the surroundings.

The profound ark near them was completely drenched in thick, steaming blood, and even turning the gate into a horrific, butchered abattoir within the span of a single heartbeat.

Inside the golden dragon barrier, Xun Xie’er was utterly, completely shocked.

The world around her seemed to lose all sound, replaced by the deafening, high-pitched ringing of a shattered mind.

Her breath stopped entirely in her throat, her silver eyes trembled violently, staring down at the crimson pool spreading across the flagstones just outside her protective light.

And there, rolling slowly across the wet stone before coming to a dead halt right before her feet, barely an inch from the edge of the golden barrier... was a ragged, torn piece of skin belonging to her father-in-law Chen Shan’s face, his lifeless, dead eye rolling alongside it, still frozen in an expression of uncomprehending terror.

”A... Ah...”

A strangled, broken whimper escaped Xun Xie’er’s trembling lips.

Her mind fractured under the sheer, brutal weight of the scene.

These were Chen Feng’s beloved parents—the kind, gentle elders who had just been holding her hands on the plaza, who had joked about breaking their son’s legs if he ever mistreated her, who represented the final, untainted mortal warmth of their family.

And the elders... the venerable pillars of the White Dragon Sect who had governed the continent for generations... all erased, turned into unrecognizable chunks of raw meat in less than three seconds.

Shen Haoran stepped forward with slow, rhythmic strides, his boots casually stepping over the pooling blood, leaving faint crimson footprints upon the stone.

He stopped directly in front of the golden dragon sphere, looking down through the translucent light at the weeping, shattered woman collapsed upon her knees.

Haoran smirked, his lips curving into a sharp, venomous, and thoroughly cruel line as his golden eyes danced with sadistic mockery.

”Look at you, Lady Xun,” Haoran’s voice was smooth, relaxed, and dripping with venomous, mocking disdain as he pointed his finger toward the bloody remains scattered across the floor.

”The peerless, celebrated first beauty of the empire. The majestic wife of the great White Dragon Emperor. You possess the peak 9th-stage Nirvana Rebirth cultivation, and you stand surrounded by the grand, almighty protective light left behind by your beloved husband...”

He leaned down slightly, his gaze piercing directly into her weeping silver eyes.

”Yet here you are, completely untouched, perfectly safe inside your shiny little golden cage... while you sit there and helplessly watch your beloved in-laws get ground into a puddle of pig feed right before your very eyes.”

Haoran let out a low, deeply amused chuckle, his voice echoing across the bloody surroundings like a devil’s whisper.

”Tell me, Xun Xie’er... when your noble Chen Feng finally returns, only to find his mother’s ribs and his father’s face scraped off these stones like discarded offal... will he praise you for how safely and faithfully you preserved your own life?”

Listening to Haoran’s words, Xun Xie’er’s entire reality suddenly shattered into a thousand jagged, irrecoverable pieces.

Her hands, trembling so violently that her fingernails tore into her own skin, rose to clutch the sides of her head.

Her long, silky sky-blue hair fell loose from its silver phoenix hairpin, spilling in tangled, frantic waves over her face.

Her breathing dissolved into shallow, ragged gasps, her throat constricting until every breath felt like inhaling shards of broken glass.

”No... no, no, no...” she whispered, her voice a cracked, hollow stammer that barely rose above the wind. ”Father... Mother... this isn’t real... this is just an illusion... Brother Feng... where are you...? Why aren’t you here...?”

She stumbled backward on her knees, her boots slipping in the faint crimson spray that had coated the floor beneath the barrier.

Her crystalline silver eyes, once glowing with grace and noble poise, were completely unfocused, dilated to their limit as they fixated on the ragged piece of her father-in-law’s face lying barely an inch beyond the golden boundary.

The image burned itself into the deepest chambers of her soul, fracturing her mind with unbearable, visceral trauma.

Every kind word Lin Ruo had spoken to her that morning, every hearty laugh Chen Shan had let out on the plaza, every warm memory of their humble mortal village, all of it had been reduced to a steaming puddle of minced meat, pulverized organs, and crushed marrow in the span of three heartbeats.

”Ugh... GACK!”

Her stomach violently convulsed.

A wave of suffocating, acidic bile rushed up her throat, and Xun Xie’er doubled over, puking violently onto the pristine floor of the barrier.

Clear vomit, bile, and blood splattered across the stone as she heaved uncontrollably, her delicate frame wracked by full-body tremors.

Tears, snot, and sweat ran freely down her pale, porcelain face, smearing across her cheeks in an undignified, wretched mess.

The celebrated first beauty of the empire, the untouchable fairy of the White Dragon Sect, was now reduced to a broken, weeping husk curled on the ground, clawing at her own hair as she sobbed in pure, unadulterated madness.

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR—!!!!!

As if directly sensing the shattered, catastrophic state of Xun Xie’er’s soul, the barrier surrounding her suddenly turned into an ethereal white dragon that roared in fury.

Then, without waiting for an order, the white dragon detached from its defensive orbit, baring its razor-sharp spectral fangs as it dove straight toward Shen Haoran and Qing’er with great momentum.

Qing’er, standing half a step beside Haoran, merely narrowed her cold crimson eyes as a subtle frown of annoyance creased her brow.

SWISH—!

Without a single word, Qing’er raised her hand, her index finger slicing through the air like a guillotine.

A crescent blade of concentrated qi, sharp enough to cleave a continent in two, flashed forward and cleanly severed the white dragon phantom in half at the torso.

BOOM!

The white dragon ruptured into thousands of scattered, glowing motes of radiant energy, its head and tail dissolving into the air.

Yet, before the debris could even hit the stone floor, an unnatural resonance hummed through the atmosphere.

HUMMMMMMMMM—!

The scattered particles did not dissipate, but instead, they paused in mid-air, reversing their trajectory and flowing back together in a seamless, fluid current.

Within a fraction of a second, the severed halves of the dragon reconnected, the scales stitching themselves together without a single blemish, and the beast let out another deafening roar, lunging forward with its claws primed.

Qing’er’s brow furrowed deeper.

Because this dragon phantom was a protective manifestation directly carved from Chen Feng’s Physique, it possessed an intrinsic, miraculous fragment of his ability—the conceptual law of Order, which automatically corrects disruptions.

Under the purview of this law, any destructive interference, whether it was deadly alchemical poisons, soul-corroding curses, foreign chaotic energies, or overwhelming physical strikes, was treated as an ’unnatural distortion’ of the world.

The power of Heavenly Order would immediately intervene, gradually reorganizing, purifying, and neutralizing the hostile energy.

In other words, whatever attacks struck the dragon were fundamentally neutralized at the conceptual level, and whenever its form sustained catastrophic damage, the Heavenly Order instantly corrected the injury, forcing the dragon to heal and reconstruct itself back into its perfect, unbroken state.

SLASH!

CRACK!

BOOM!

Qing’er’s silhouette blurred across the area as she struck the beast with a barrage of palm strikes, shadow spears, and spatial compressions, destroying the dragon’s physical manifest three, four, five times in rapid succession.

Yet, like an immortal phantom that defied the very concept of entropy, the white dragon reformed every single time.

Its severed limbs reattached, its crushed skull reconstituted from pure light, and its draconic aura surged back to its peak without losing a single drop of vitality.

”How tiresome,” Qing’er whispered, her voice chilling the ambient air to absolute zero.

She had seen enough of this lower realm’s parlor tricks, so without hesitation, she tapped her boot against the ground, and the shadow beneath her feet violently surged upward.

A colossal shadow domain, an ocean of true abyssal void that blocked out the sky, the sun, and the surrounding mountain ranges, erupted across the entire area.

The titanic, multi-limbed shadow abomination manifested once more, its thousands of mouths and fangs opening simultaneously as it wrapped its massive shadow tentacles around the struggling golden dragon.

The shadow domain tightened like a cosmic vise, creating a vacuum of devouring force that completely engulfed the dragon in a suffocating sphere of endless darkness.

CRUNCH—!!!!!

Qing’er did not merely strike it; she subjected the dragon to continuous, infinite grinding!

Millions of micro-blades tore through the dragon’s scales, core, and spiritual structure trillions of times per second, grinding its essence with such relentless, overwhelming ferocity that the Heavenly Order’s correction ability simply could not keep up with the sheer speed of destruction.

No matter how blessed of a protagonist Chen Feng was, and no matter how heaven-defying his Heavenly Order Dragon Body truly was, this lingering phantom was, in the end, merely a minor, severed fragment of his abilities left behind.

Chen Feng himself was not physically present to channel his boundless karmic luck, replenish its core essence, or adapt to the threat.

And above all—standing before this creature was Qing’er, a genuine Earthly Saint Realm expert whose cultivation and mastery of shadow laws stood leagues above the entire power ceiling of this depleted lower world.

Against such an insurmountable chasm in cultivation and knowledge, a stagnant wisp of protection had no hope of survival.

KRRRRRR-SHATTER—!

Within mere seconds, the white dragon let out a final, strangled shriek as its regenerative loops collapsed under the endless grinding.

Its light was completely crushed, broken down into raw, unrefine qi, which Qing’er’s undulating shadows greedily devoured, pulling every last scrap of energy into her dantian until not a single trace of the White Dragon Emperor’s protection remained in the world.

Soon, the oppressive darkness receded back into Qing’er’s shadow, leaving the surroundings silent once more.

Shen Haoran watched everything with amusement.

His hands remained casually clasped behind his back as he stepped over the fresh pools of blood and slowly walked towards the still distressed and traumatized Xun Xie’er.

The woman was still collapsed upon the cold stones, shivering uncontrollably amidst her own vomit and tears.

She was clutching her head, rocking back and forth in a frantic, broken rhythm, her silver eyes entirely glazed over and staring into the empty void.

She seemed completely unaware that her husband’s dragon phantom had just been extinguished, utterly oblivious to the clearing of the battlefield, and entirely detached from the reality unfolding around her.

Haoran stopped directly above her, looking down at her wretched, trembling silhouette with a cold, sharp frown of utter disdain.

”What a truly pathetic sight,” Haoran mocked her, his voice smooth, clear, and dripping with merciless cruelty. ”The proud mistress of the White Dragon Sect, reduced to a sniveling, drooling wretch who can do nothing but soil herself on the floor. Is this the peerless fairy that Chen Feng holds in his heart? A fragile, decorative doll that shatters into dust the moment she catches a single glimpse of true bloodshed?”

Xun Xie’er didn’t respond. She didn’t look up, only letting out another soft, broken whimper as she clawed at her scalp, her mind entirely consumed by the memory of her in-laws exploding before her eyes.

Shen Haoran’s golden eyes held no pity, no hesitation, and not a single shred of remorse.

With a subtle flick of his wrist, his spatial ring flashed with a faint silver hue.

SHING.

A simple, unadorned, nameless steel sword materialized in his grip.

The blade was plain, possessing neither ancient engravings nor grand spirit inscriptions, but under the guidance of his cultivation, its edge gleamed with lethal luster.

Without a single word of farewell, Shen Haoran stepped forward, raised the nameless sword, and drove the steel blade straight down through the center of Xun Xie’er’s chest.

SQUELCH!

The sharp metal pierced through her silk gown, slicing effortlessly through her skin, flesh, and ribs before plunging directly through her beating heart, pinning her body firmly against the ground.